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Freed from prison in 2010 but unable to walk, she ended up living in a Beijing park with her husband for nearly two months, until unflattering publicity led local officials to move them into a cheap hotel.
Their predicament will most likely take a turn for the worse in the coming weeks, when a court in the capital’s Xicheng district is expected to sentence the couple on charges that include “picking quarrels” and disturbing public order. “I’m afraid the sentence this time will be especially heavy,” their lawyer, Cheng Hai, said after their hearing on Thursday.
The trial of Ms. Ni and her husband, Dong Jiqin, capped a particularly grim year for Chinese dissidents and human rights advocates. In recent weeks, two veteran activists, Chen Wei and Chen Xi, have been given long sentences for essays criticizing the ruling Communist Party. Late last month, the authorities announced that Gao Zhisheng, a prominent rights lawyer, would have to spend an additional three years in prison for violating the terms of his probation.
Unaddressed in the terse official statement was how Mr. Gao, who had spent the previous 20 months in the custody of public security agents, had broken the law.
Although the government has long restricted the work and words of opponents, its tolerance has diminished further since February, when unrest in the Arab world unnerved senior leaders. Dozens of rights lawyers and intellectuals have been detained, countless others have been subjected to heightened police surveillance, and propaganda officials have sought to tighten controls on the Internet.
The artist and critic Ai Weiwei, who disappeared for more than two months, is still battling tax-evasion charges, an accusation he says is designed to silence him.
“The government seems to be going in only one direction, which is more control and harsher punishment against political dissidents,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This is a reflection of the broader atmosphere in China, which is more conservative and hard-line.”
Mr. Bequelin and other analysts say they suspect the space for dissent will only narrow in 2012. There is the coming change in leadership, a transition that takes place once every decade, as well as the specter of an economic slowdown that party leaders worry could exacerbate social tensions.
Prognosticating in China is always a risky endeavor, but there are signs that the Communist Party is seeking to sharpen the tools it uses to quash dissent. A proposed revision to the criminal code would allow the police to secretly detain for six months those accused of “endangering national security,” a catchall designation often wielded against political offenders.
Jerome A. Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and an expert on Chinese law, called the revision “sinister” and said it would unduly strengthen the hand of the police. “It legalizes repressive and abusive state tactics,” Professor Cohen said.
The case of Ms. Ni and Mr. Dong highlights the ways officials can leverage the legal system against those they deem to be nuisances. Ms. Ni, 51, who received a law degree from China University of Political Science and Law, drew the attention of the authorities in 2002, when she used her expertise to help neighbors in Xicheng fighting eviction, part of the government’s sweeping effort to remake the capital ahead of the Olympics.
Detained after she tried to photograph demolition crews, she said she was kicked and pummeled over the course of 15 hours, leaving her incontinent and unable to walk. She was released after 75 days but continued her legal work while also seeking redress for the beating. Over the next few years, she was arrested twice more and convicted of “obstructing public business.”
During her three years in prison, she said, she endured frequent indignities: An officer once urinated on her face, she said, and prison officials often took away her crutches, forcing her to crawl from her cell to the prison workshop. One of her tasks included cleaning toilets.
Her daughter, too, said she was subjected to government surveillance. “The police followed me to school and watched me all day so I would experience the fear,” said the daughter, Dong Xuan, now 27.
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